


Untouched

by aparticularbandit



Series: Roisa Fic Week 2k19 [2]
Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 08:53:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20132731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aparticularbandit/pseuds/aparticularbandit
Summary: Rose looked at the mess of Luisa’s face – the palm prints on either side, the dot on the tip of her nose, the wine red on her lips – and sighed.  “I have destroyed you.”“No,” Luisa whispered, “you have made me.”Fulfillment of Soulmate AU Prompt for Roisa Fic Week 2k19.





	Untouched

**Author's Note:**

> man, i think trying to come up with a fic summary is almost harder than coming up with a title.

_Untouched_, they called her, skin potato white where it wasn’t sprinkled with freckles like paprika. _Unmarked_.

Her gloved fingers brushed through her red curls, along her own fair skin – what little of it was exposed to external view. The only visible skin shone from the chin up. Even her neck was covered so as to prevent accidental touch from passerby. She _should_ be wearing her mask, transparent and carefully shaped so that it would curve just to meet the piece at her neck, leaving only her crafted curls exposed, but as much as the mask was made of materials that were supposed to breathe easy, she found it all too easily suffocating.

It wasn’t as though her skin had never been brushed by others’ fingers. There’d been many, _many_ encounters with other women throughout the years, particularly in college, but none of them had left their permanent mark. There was no stain in her skin, nothing left behind by whomsoever was supposed to be her soulmate. There were bars and meeting places for people like her, people who could meet and talk and on impulse take each other somewhere more private to touch, to watch, to _see_, but for the most part, she didn’t frequent them. They came with an air of desperation, as though the women and men were so hungry to find warmth in the arms of whomever their skin reacted to that no one else would do.

She’d _tried_ one of them. Once. On bringing the young woman back with her and on finding that they weren’t _soulmates_, the woman had wanted nothing to do with her at all. She didn’t want to “waste her time” with someone she wasn’t _compatible_ with, as though the marks were all that mattered, not talking or chemistry or any other form of connection.

Other bars were much more satisfying, even if they did give her odd looks for continuing to wear her full suit, for the lack of marks on her arms, her legs, her wrists, her hands. Most people still had some sort of connection laced between their fingers or discoloration on the palms of their hands from their first meeting, but Rose?

_Nothing._

She might as well not have a soulmate at all.

* * *

Her bright blue eyes roamed the bar as she arrived, one finger tapping on the clasp of her purse. There were a lot of women here again – many of them she’d seen before, spent time with before – not always alone. Too many of them had refused to see her on the basis of her unmarked skin, hadn’t wanted to spend time with a woman who could all too easily leave them when she found whoever would leave their fingerprints behind, even though their own was often covered with the colors and designs of whomever had marked _them_.

Even if they weren’t soulmates, the marked often sought out the marked, who would understand their broken longing for the soulmate who had left them behind or had chosen someone other than them or who had passed on too soon.

Then her gaze caught on something – and someone – she’d never seen before: a woman, apparently as unmarked as she was, but without gloves, without a full body suit, without any external markers of one untouched but who was, somehow, clearly so. The woman spun the straw in her drink counterclockwise then looked up towards the door, her dark eyes catching her own. She froze, but the weight of the woman’s stare was alluring.

Rose moved towards her, voice soft with a simple, “Hi.”

“Hi,” the woman echoed, and her bare hand reached out immediately to touch her covered thigh.

“You’re new,” she said, placing her gloved hand over the other woman’s bare one, holding it in place.

The woman’s brows raised. “Luisa.” She spread her fingers beneath her hand and intertwined their fingers.

“Rose.”

“You’re untouched,” Luisa said, and there was no antagonism in her voice, no disdain, just a quiet acknowledgement. But her gaze didn’t focus on the covered expanse of Rose’s skin; instead it focused on what she _could_ see. Sometimes her eyes would flit to Rose’s lips, sometimes they would catch the curve of her red hair in the light, but more often than that, they would rest on her eyes.

Rose didn’t smile, and instead of holding Luisa’s gaze, she broke it, letting her eyes focus on the bare hand entangled with her own gloved one. She tried to find hints of color between Luisa’s fingers, but there was nothing. “Does that bother you?”

“No.” Luisa touched her without touching her – another bare hand now holding the one Rose had offered. “Does it bother _you_?” She flipped Rose’s hand so that she could trace the lines of her palm atop the glove. It was an idle thing, Rose was sure, but she enjoyed it just the same.

Instead of answering her question, Rose asked, voice soft, “Can I get you a drink?”

Luisa’s eyes returned to her from the careful tracing of her palm, and her warm eyes seemed as exposed as the rest of her. “34 days sober.” She faked a smile. “No soulmates in there.”

“Rehab,” Rose said, but it wasn’t necessary. She couldn’t stop her eyes from wandering across Luisa’s skin, just as agonizingly pure as her own. “You’re reckless.”

“A little bit.” Luisa reached out as though to cup Rose’s face with her bare hand, but instead, her fingers just brushed alongside the curves of her red hair, avoiding her skin, a smile playing about her lips. “Do you want to be reckless with me?”

* * *

Rose took Luisa back to her apartment more as a precaution than out of any desire to hide her away. Their hands remained tangled together as they walked, and for all the times their bodies just brushed against each other, Luisa seemed careful to acknowledge the places that Rose left uncovered – her face, her lips – and did not once touch them. That was the way of markings and souls – what was unexposed was invulnerable and unable to be stained on first brush, so to touch what was unguarded was sacrilege without explicitly defined permission.

Then again, Luisa was a walking sacrilege, a soul begging to be touched, unafraid of who or what might leave their marks on her.

It was in the calm of her apartment, the door clicking shut behind her, that Rose led the other woman to her bedroom and sat her down on her bed. “Wait here,” she murmured, hands placed on Luisa’s. “Please.”

There was no excitement or no expectation from either of them – if Luisa believed anything of her from their brief meeting, Rose didn’t feel it, and for herself, she had no reason to believe that Luisa’s touch would leave anything behind as much as any of the other women she’d brought. She didn’t know if Luisa hoped for anything, and she certainly held no hope to herself. Only the passing memories of seeing the yellow paint stain circling her parents’ hands when she was a child, seeing the color fade on her father’s as time went on until it looked more like an opalescent scar than a soulmark.

Rose lay herself bare before the mirror before she ever did before a woman she’d brought back with her, and it was almost a secret ceremony of her own, a final glance and inspection of her unmarred body, reminding herself that _this_ was how she looked and that no fingerprints or colors or splotches would change any of that. When she was younger, she imagined love like a bruise on the palm of her hand or like the burst scabs on her knees when she fell the wrong way out of trees, but now she saw nothing.

She wrapped a towel around her front and tied another around her waist like a small skirt and returned to find Luisa just where she left her, albeit leaning on one arm, her palm resting flat on her violet comforter. “Is this your ritual?” she asked, taking in the thin towels; Rose’s long, freckle-covered legs; and the bare skin of her neck, her arms.

Rose sat on the bed next to Luisa, legs tucked neatly beneath her, careful not to touch. “Dress off.”

“What if I say no?” Luisa tilted her head to one side, eyes focused once more entirely on Rose’s face. “Do I leave? Would I be ruining something?”

Rose didn’t lower her head but maintained her position. “Let this be a gift, if….” Then her eyes lowered, catching Luisa’s hand again. “I always thought, if I could, it would be better to—”

But before she could finish, Luisa was slowly removing her dress, peeling it first from her shoulders and then down until it fell to the ground at her feet. “Now what?”

Rose took a deep breath, steadying herself, because even in a moment where nothing is hoped for and only the worst is expected, there is still a little hope, that thing her spirit held onto, even though she knew she would only be denied. “Palm, please.”

Luisa held up her hand, palm out, and Rose met her eyes. “Permission to touch?”

“You’ve been touching me already. This isn’t any different.”

“Liar.”

Luisa just rolled her eyes. “Permission granted. You can do whatever you want with me.”

“You might regret that.” Rose reached out and gently, carefully, placed one finger in the middle of Luisa’s palm.

At first, there was nothing. Then, when she moved her finger, being careful to keep constant contact with Luisa’s skin, a thin black line followed. She couldn’t keep herself from grinning, couldn’t stop the warmth beating in the center of her chest and spreading like wildfire.

“Are you—?”

“Stay _very still_,” Rose said, her voice a hush, and at her thought, the color of the mark shifted from black to a bright, sunshiny yellow. She lifted her gaze to meet Luisa’s. “What’s your favorite color?”

“What are you going to do?”

Rose grinned. “_Paint._”

* * *

At Luisa’s request, the line that Rose meant to spiral around her arm became a long vine, covered with sunflowers and deep red roses, each finger-painted on in excruciating detail. When she’d realized that her soulmate would come later rather than sooner, Rose had spent time in more art classes – they were required by schools from the earliest age up, not just history but also different painting techniques. There were so many theories on artists and the marks they left behind on walls, on canvases, on human bodies, that these things were taught as sacred, as something to be emulated by the lowest in their dirt and grime to those sitting on piles of wealth – and it came down to the artistic ability of each individual. Only a soulmate could leave their mark on another person’s skin in a manner such as this, and so while an artist might be called upon for walls and canvases, there was nothing to be done about skin.

Tattoos notwithstanding – or burns – both of which were of a different sort than the soulmark.

Rose had, in some senses, excelled, but here she found that keeping her mind focused on the task at hand and not switching suddenly from one color to another was harder than she’d imagined. She dared not think of the colors that would be left behind on the tips of her fingers – whether they would be all those she had used merged together or if they were another color that Luisa was keeping in mind, one which she would not see until they were finally finished.

Her soulmate – and the word thrummed under her skin the same as her pulse – lay on her stomach, her back bare before her, and Rose kept one finger on her shoulder, at the tip of the last sunflower, while she considered what to draw. Her bare knees hugged Luisa’s waist – keeping the contact in case she wanted a full view, in case she needed to move her hands, but right now, she was at a loss. Her stomach clenched. Whatever she made would remain here, and if she changed her mind—

Her lips pressed together, and she began to lengthen the vine so that she could draw yet another rose just at the tip of Luisa’s right shoulder blade.

“What are you going to make?” Luisa asked, turning her head so that she could look up at Rose but unable to see more than what was happening at her shoulder.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“You know, this would be the absolute _worst_ time to have painter’s block.” Luisa buried her face in her pillow again and let out a sigh. “I know _everyone_ gets it every now and again, but me, I’d probably get stuck thinking about skeletons and muscles and identifications and end up writing scientific names in patterns all over your back.”

“You’re not going to actually do that, are you?”

“No,” Luisa said with a little laugh like bubbles in a stream, and Rose knew what she wanted to draw. “You went first, so I get time to think about it.”

Rose shook her head as she started the first line across Luisa’s back – long and sweeping. “I’ve been thinking about this my entire life. That doesn’t mean I have exact ideas or knew exactly what I wanted to paint on _your_ back.”

“But you _do_ know, don’t you?” Luisa lifted her head and propped it on her crossed arms, examining the vine, the flowers covering her right arm. “You’re really good at this.”

“I’m not that good.”

“In comparison to my finger painting, you’re a genius.” Luisa ran a finger along one of the roses, tracing one of the petals with the hint of dew on its edge. “I could never paint like this.”

Rose didn’t pause in her artwork, but she could feel her face whiten and was glad that Luisa was in no position to easily see it. “However you paint will be fine,” she said, but in her mind, she was thinking of stick figures and the drawings of children who hadn’t yet learned how to be proper. (_She’d_ never learned how to be proper, but she’d gotten good at faking it.)

“Liar.”

There was silence for a few moments, Rose refusing to change Luisa’s mind and Luisa still focusing on the flowers now stained in her arm, until, finally, Rose asked, her voice very soft, “Is that why you didn’t wear your suit? You wanted the mark to be over and done with so that you wouldn’t feel like you would be letting your soulmate down?”

Luisa shrugged, and Rose was glad that she’d been focusing on her lower back near her waist because she wasn’t sure what the action might have done to the art. Then she started to speak, her voice so quiet Rose could barely hear it at first.

“All my life I was told I was a technical genius but not an artistic one. High intelligence quotient, even higher _emotional_ quotient – means I’m good at people and relationships—”

_I know what it is_, Rose wanted to say, but she knew better than to cut her off and interrupt.

“—but no artistic ability whatsoever. I _hated_ art class because it was all me _trying_ to make something beautiful and my seeing something beautiful in the wreckage I made but being told over and over that it was a train wreck of a design. That my skill would never match up to what I could see in my head.”

“Then this should be easier for you,” Rose murmured. “This is all in your head.”

“And in my fingers’ ability to draw it out.” Luisa shook her head. “You’re an artist and you have a bum soulmate who isn’t going to draw anything nearly as good when you’ve _actually_ been adhering to keeping your body suit on and making sure that you’re perfect and prepared for this and it’s going to be wasted on me.”

“Nothing is wasted on you.”

Rose squeezed her knees on either side of Luisa’s waist and reached down to take her unmarked hand with her own. “Turn, please.”

And, obedient as ever, Luisa did, her skin rolling against Rose’s legs and becoming marked a soft, soft sky blue. There were tear marks tracing her cheeks, and she refused to look up to meet Rose’s eyes. Without thinking, Rose reached down and cupped her soulmate’s cheeks with both hands, brushing her thumbs along her tears, and Luisa gasped before Rose could even realize what she’d done. All at once, she pulled her hands away, but it was too late – there were stains of the same blue color covering either side of Luisa’s face.

“I can fix this,” Rose whispered, thinking of the people she had seen with marks on their faces, some blatant and some small but none quite like this because no one left their own head enough to swim in their heart when they were staining designs into their soulmate’s skin. Her eyes ran over the mess she’d left on her soulmate’s face and she murmured, again, “I can fix this,” trying to make a pattern out of what she saw.

Luisa leaned up, careful to keep herself touching Rose’s knees, and asked, voice soft, “Permission to touch?”

Rose’s roaming eyes focused on Luisa’s, on the spark of forest green embedded in them that she’d drawn into her back, and she took a deep breath to still herself. “What are you going to do?”

Something dark passed through Luisa’s eyes, then, and she pulled away. “Nothing,” she said, refusing to look up again. “Nothing. You don’t want me to—”

And again, without thinking, Rose leaned forward, knocking her nose against Luisa’s, and brushed their lips together. Her own emotional quotient had never been very high, but she’d made up for it in working with her hands, in physical communication, but there was something electric about true touch without clothes or masks or gloves between them.

When she pulled away, Luisa gasped.

“What?”

“Your nose! It’s red like Rudolph!” She reached out on instinct and then hesitated, her fingers inches away from Rose’s skin. “Can I—?”

“Of course.”

And Luisa’s fingers found not the tip of Rose’s nose but traced her lips the way Rose might put on lipstick in the mornings, delicately following their curves until, finally, “There.” Luisa looked up and met Rose’s eyes. “That’s something put right.”

Rose looked at the mess of Luisa’s face – the palm prints on either side, the dot on the tip of her nose, the wine red on her lips – and sighed. “I have destroyed you.”

“No,” Luisa whispered, “you have _made_ me.” Then she grinned, which looked a little haphazard with the stains across her face. “Besides, you’ve done a good job of making sure that people who want to see me actually _want_ to see me. And kids will _love_ me. So it’s not so bad. You’re just getting rid of the shitty people.”

It was at the mention of children that Rose’s eyes lit up, and she bent forward, pressing a shorter kiss to Luisa’s lips before saying, eyes bright with mischief. “I know how to fix this. But you can’t look until you’ve finished with me.”

Luisa’s eyes widened, and she gave a little nod.

At her acceptance, Rose pressed forward and brushed her nose along Luisa’s before leaning back again. “Still red?” she asked.

“No,” Luisa whispered. “This is something else entirely.”

* * *

When Rose finished with her art on Luisa’s face, she slowly took Luisa’s hand in one of her own again and carefully rearranged their bodies so that she was lying flat on the bed, staring up at the other woman. “Your turn,” she murmured, gently moving Luisa’s hand so that it rested in the center of her chest. “Your design.”

Luisa left her hand resting on Rose’s chest for a full minute, staring at the woman straddled beneath her, and then removed her hand, careful to keep her knees on either side of Rose’s waist. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, wasn’t sure there was anything she _could_ do to fix the stain on Rose’s face, brushed up and down her nose, and she bit her lower lip, tugged on it, trying to come up with something, _anything_ to even slightly match the design curved around her arm, the one she still hadn’t seen on her back, and what she couldn’t imagine was on her face.

“It will be beautiful,” Rose said, and Luisa looked up at her face and winced before focusing on her eyes. “Whatever you do,” Rose continued as though Luisa hadn’t reacted at all, “it will be beautiful, and I’ll love it.”

“No, I don’t think you will.” Luisa brushed a hand through her hair and pushing some of it behind her ear. “But that makes it a little easier. If I don’t think you’ll like it, then it doesn’t matter what I draw, does it?” She smiled and leaned forward just enough to press a kiss to the tip of Rose’s nose.

“That’s mature.”

“It looks better than the tip you did.” Luisa laughed, and then, on impulse, leaned down and brushed her lips just over Rose’s pulse point. It would leave a mark anyway, and now that she had that image in mind, it became a permanent fixture – the deep color of a heavy bruise.

“And what do you call that?” Rose asked, her voice breathy as Luisa pulled away.

“Being an adult and marking what’s mine. Just like I would anyway, only a little more permanent.” Luisa grinned, letting her eyes wander over the form exposed before her, over the curves of her breasts, her small bellybutton, the way she shivered beneath her. “You know. I should give you eyes. _Right here_—” And she leaned down to trace a circle around each of Rose’s nipples before painting each of them the shade of Rose’s eyes with a black dot right in their center.

“My soulmate has the maturity of a twelve year old boy,” Rose said, rolling her eyes, but when she caught Luisa’s worried expression, she gave her a wink, her stained lips curving into a grin. “Shouldn’t you give me a _mouth_, too?”

“Oh, you’re right! How could I forget?” Luisa shuffled backwards and used her nail to spread lips across from Rose’s bellybutton, circling it and sticking her finger inside for it to stain a deep reddish black. “Now you’re _always_ surprised.” She looked up, and then, _then_, she saw it – what she wanted to do. Nothing as specific as Rose perhaps had in mind when she’d drawn along her back but enough for her to figure it out along the way.

Her eyes scanned the freckles on Rose’s chest, and her expression must have changed because Rose said, “What do you see?”

Luisa used the tip of her nail to begin to draw thin lines along Rose’s chest, spreading out from the rainbow-colored handprint in its very center.

“Something beautiful.”

* * *

It didn’t take long until Rose, too, was on her stomach, her back exposed beneath Luisa’s gaze the same way Luisa had been beneath her own. But where Rose’s fingers had painted their design, Luisa continued to spider web her own, connecting a freckle here and a freckle there along her soulmate’s skin.

“What are you doing?” Rose asked, her skin twitching the slightest bit under Luisa’s careful, tracing nail.

“When I was a child,” Luisa started instead, focusing on the art spreading beneath her hands, “I used to stare at the stars. For all my genius, I had a hard time finding and deciphering the constellations, but I _loved_ to look at the sky. It seemed so big up there, and I was so small down here. Eventually, I made a game of it and began to design my own constellations.” She smiled. “It was less about what I couldn’t remember and more about being able to make my own connections. And sometimes, when I was with people, I’d bring one of mine up, and they would correct me, and I’d just tell them, _Those are your constellations, and these are mine_.”

“Didn’t you get tired of that?”

“I did,” Luisa said, nodding even though Rose couldn’t see her yet. “I started focusing on spiders instead and the designs they could create in their webs. That was just as fascinating – Charlotte in her web making all of those words? And the way water just hangs on webs and they almost sparkle.”

“Is that what you’re making on my back? A spider web?”

“No,” Luisa said, and she leaned back on her haunches, looking over Rose’s back once more. “Not really. I’m finding constellations.” She tugged once on the towel still wrapped neatly around her soulmate’s waist. “Can I take this?”

It was only then that Rose looked over her shoulder. “You’re drawing that far?”

“Mmhm.” Luisa nodded once and her eyes met Rose’s with a twinkle. “Not very much. Just the ends of things.” Her smile just as quickly disappeared as it began. “Unless you don’t want that.”

“You can do whatever you want.”

* * *

Eventually, Luisa finished her marks. She leaned back on her haunches, examined her work, and then bent down one last time to press a kiss on the top of Rose’s right shoulder blade, right where Rose had drawn her last rose. Then she grinned to herself. “Done. And if _you_ don’t like it, _you_ don’t have to look at it.”

“I already love it,” Rose said, turning around so that she could face Luisa again. She looked up at the other woman, and her eyes searched Luisa’s. “Do you want to go see?”

“No,” Luisa said, and she leaned forward just enough to brush her nose against Rose’s again and press a kiss to her lips.

“Wait,” Rose said when they parted, and she brushed her thumb along Luisa’s nose once more. “We have to stop touching, or we will destroy what we’ve made.” She started to move away from Luisa.

Luisa placed one hand gently on Rose’s chest again, just in the same exact spot she had before. “Wait.” Her eyes ran over Rose’s face again, and she began to trace a pattern along the mess their stain had made of Rose’s nose. Then she pulled back with a smile. “Ok. _Ok._”

“You’re sure you’re done?” Rose asked.

Luisa almost nodded, and then, all at once, she placed her hand in the center of Rose’s chest again. “Can I see your palm?” she asked, and Rose held it out to her. Luisa grinned and looked at the mark Rose left in the center of hers before placing one finger just exactly in the center of Rose’s hand. “Ok. Now we’re good.” She met Rose’s eyes. “Now we match.”

“Like we’re soulmates.”

“Exactly like we’re soulmates.”

They made careful to separate exactly, to make sure that they were no longer touching, and when they did, they both let out a deep breath. Luisa ran her eyes over the form of the woman before her – the woman she already knew that she loved, even without the soulmate affirmation – and she licked her lower lip. “Is it okay now?” she asked, her voice soft. “Can I touch you?”

“You already have,” Rose said, and she took Luisa’s hand and held it against the center of her chest again. “Right here.”

“Oh, I meant a _bit_ lower,” Luisa said with a grin, and then she leaned forward, unable to keep her lips away from Rose’s any longer. There was something _incredibly cruel_ about having an attractive woman beneath her and being able to touch her but not to _touch her_, and all at once, she could feel the desire growing in her chest.

And, as Rose’s hands lifted to push through her hair in a way that they hadn’t before, she knew that Rose had been impatiently waiting, too. Maybe her whole life up to that point.

Well, now they had the rest of their life to figure things out.


End file.
